


Couldn't

by Robin Gills (Akiseo)



Category: MASH
Genre: Angst, Other, Suicidal Themes, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-13
Updated: 2012-09-13
Packaged: 2017-11-14 03:22:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akiseo/pseuds/Robin%20Gills
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawkeye feels he has no way out and no where to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Couldn't

I couldn't take it. I had to let it out. Let out the pain, anguish, depression, sadness… and Korea. Everything that made life not worth living. I couldn't take it anymore. I felt the immense pressure growing. It was all building to a pressure point. It's as if I were a shaken Coke with its cap ready to pop. I wanted to let it out, release it, let it go - I “ _had“_ to otherwise it would suffocate me.

There were things eating away at me. Eating at my stomach, lungs, and my heart.

I had taken to forgetting things. Leaving things lying around in the Swamp, the mess, post-OP. I didn't know how because I'd leave the room and I thought, no I _believed_ , I had put on my robe. I had felt the weight of the cloth on my shoulders as it wrapped around me. I had walked in below freezing temperatures, without even realize it was missing. I had _sensed_ it swinging around my ankles. Once I reached post-Op Margaret asked me why I hadn't been wearing a coat. I hadn't noticed a thing.

Sleeping was a problem I couldn't get rid of. I used to love going to bed - sleeping and the unconscious bliss. Sleeping used to break up the day, a relief from the pressure, when I could just drift and not worry. Sleeping was bliss in the beginning. I would often find any time to nap. After hours of surgery my brain would focus on a single goal - passing out on my cot.

But sleeping was no longer pleasurable. The drifting comfortable void came slower now. It took hours for sleep to claim my exhausted brain. My body would lie limp in my cot but my brain would be restless. I'd toss and turn my floppy limbs around until hours later my brain would relax. I never get a full night of sleep anymore. I'd wake almost like clockwork every two hours during the night. My dreams were also affected. I couldn't ever remember the clarity of them. What I did receive from my nightmares was the same thing every night. I'd see bright lights, endless red, doubt, and sadness. When I'd wake and try to remember my dreams they would only be laced with fear.

Surgery was always a drag. Long hours, bloodshed, death and the dying. I held a very small pleasure in the fact that I was chief surgeon, but it lasted the span of ten seconds. Surgery was something I had enjoyed. I had enjoyed – surgery and saving lives. But that wasn't necessarily the goal here in Korea… enjoying. Surgery became something different, something to endure, to get over. I didn't know it at first, but the pressure of being chief surgeon was immense. All the other doctors and nurses looked to me for advice, counted on me. I didn't mind it, it used to keep me going.

I was becoming increasingly annoyed with everything and everyone. Things I shouldn't be annoyed about. Small things annoyed me. Things that I wouldn't normally think twice about. Radar's voice, a comment from a nurse in the OR, something Frank said in the Swamp or the way I received a scalpel in my hand.

I found myself not caring, not wanting to do anything. I didn't want to play cards, drink gin, play jokes, or talk. It annoyed me or there was just too much to handle when they got together to play cards. I would have to suppress the annoyances that would pop up. I have to damper the anger that would rise up after a comment was made.

Drinking gin just brought back feelings and thoughts I'd long suppressed. Feelings about family. My mother. My father. My inability and my sorrow for not being able to save everyone that came through the compound, surfaces. My own humanity was drawn up. How fragile all life was.

I remembered Julie, Mark, and Susan all past affairs that ended sourly. I remembered Trapper. How I never got to say goodbye in time. How we had ended on a sour note. I predicted all my relationships will follow that path. A path of grief. I could never fix the ties between any of us. I wouldn't. I couldn't change all of me to suit their needs or wants. They would all get tired of me, they would all leave, eventually.

I couldn't ever do that to BJ. He's just too special to me for me to screw with the friendship we have. I didn't want him to get to close to me. But I didn't want him to get to far either. Everyday was a struggle. Most times I'd forget and I find myself on the same cot, drinking form the glass he offers. I tried to balance it but it never worked. I couldn't control it anymore and I'm more afraid of losing him than I ever was of dying.

My jokes came slower, they came out angrier and they're not as smart as they once where. Talking used to relieve things, but it not longer stimulates me and it's become tiring.

Even talking to BJ.

BJ… I knew he cared about me and it grew more as I withdrew away from everyone. He cared just like the others here that I've grown close to. Radar made a point to tell me that he's worried and that he's always there for me to talk to if I need it. And I knew, but it annoyed me that he felt he needed to tell me, continuously. It bothered me. I told him I knew. I've told him little things about how I feel, hoping it would sustain him but he kept coming back.

I've told BJ too, just little things. Maybe to make him feel comforted that I'm talking to him or so he knows I've told someone. I'd always see him watching me with concern in his cool eyes. And that even began to annoy me slightly. I tried to push that away. I couldn't let the things that BJ said or did annoy me. BJ was my little blip of reality. But - the blip was dying. I couldn't hold onto it. And I couldn't tell if I was giving up or I was just beyond caring. It wasn't anything BJ had done, it's me. Something within me was going away or had already gone.

As I laid there, within the old store room, I remembered my childhood in Crabapple Cove, friends, the university, and now Korea. They all seemed to be mixing together, merging into one big mess. My life had been compounded down into a big nightmare.

And Hawkeye's nightmare was bleeding out onto the storeroom floor, mixing with the dust, dirt, and grime. It was an ugly combination. Just like everything else in this world across the ocean. The repulsive brown mess crept away from him, down to the right, following the tilt of the floor boards.

The mix may have been running away, but all the pain and pressure wasn't leaving him. It was still hanging around him and in him like a wet blanket. As much as he tried it wouldn't leave. The stream of brown and gray grew into a bigger and bigger puddle. Nothing would abate the feelings coursing through him. His depression grew, if it was possible. Nothing was working. He may have been reduced to tears if he had anything left for tears. The world seemed to be in a fog. He could see much farther than the next few shelves. He couldn't hear anything beyond his own shallow breathing. He didn't feel anything but the constant pressure.

That fog was penetrated, however, by a brief intrusion of white light. Hawkeye couldn't hear the world through the fog, but it also parted as he heard the doors shut. It was strange to hear shaky breaths inhaling and exhaling throughout the storeroom. He heard an apprehensive voice call his name. He could hear fear in that familiar voice. He rolled his lax head up from its position on his slumped shoulder. Through the dim light of the room he could see the white, concerned face of BJ. He made an attempt to smile at his companion, but he didn't think it came out as a smile.

"Beej," he whispered. Before it fully registered in his brain the other man was kneeling in front of him. He didn't even attempt to avoid the mess.

"Hawkeye." The voice was tense. BJ's arms made a movement as if to grasp his arms or his shoulders, Hawkeye couldn't tell which.

"Do you think it'd make a good martini?" Hawkeye laughed lightly, or at least he tried as his vision became blurry and he felt like he'd just gotten off a merry-go-round.

"What's going on, Hawkeye?" BJ asked. His voice was calm but there was a trace of fear. Hawkeye didn't know why he didn't feel fear. Maybe that had left him with the bloody mess on the floor.

"Couldn't… can't…" Hawkeye tried to get the words out but they wouldn't come – nothing seemed to be working out anymore.

"Just hand me the scalpel, Hawkeye, and we'll work this out. Just you and me, we'll figure it out." BJ said as he reached for the instrument that was dangling loosely in Hawkeye's right hand.

Hawkeye tried to move his hand away, but he only managed to flop it off his leg and into the mess on the floor.

"Won't…" Hawkeye mumbled.

"Won't what?" BJ asked as he held his hand out, waiting.

"Leave." Hawkeye felt his eyes roll around in his head. He fought to remember why he was laying in this dusty old room. "Pressure…"

"It's alright now, Hawkeye, I've got you. I'll make it go away." BJ's voice was almost pleading now as Hawkeye felt his hold on reality slipping.

"Please." Hawkeye managed to mumble out.

BJ snatched the instrument away in an instant and tossed it across the room as if had bit him. Hawkeye heard BJ's voice shouting words, but he couldn't recognize them. His world tilted and his brain registered that he was falling. But BJ's arms came around him and held him. He felt the warm arms embrace him. He felt something wet on his temple and hair.

BJ was crying. He hadn't meant to make BJ cry, he really didn't. He heard other voices in the background and he thought he heard Potter, but before he succumbed to the darkness all he heard was BJ's soft sad voice whispering into his ear. "I love you, Hawkeye. Don't die, don't leave me. I love you. I love you..."


End file.
